


Confessions of a Better Man

by Batagur



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 10:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/797733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batagur/pseuds/Batagur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Told in first person by Blair Sandburg. After the failed dissertation and police academy, Blair reflex back on his life while in crisis and looks at all the choices he made out of selfishness and the one choice he made out of love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confessions of a Better Man

## Confessions of a Better Man

#### by E. Batagur

Author's website: <http://www.soulsistahslash.com>  
Paramount and PetFly own the Sentinel and all its characters. I own nothing and make no profit.  
  
  
This story is a sequel to: 

* * *

I am a fool. 

And I say that with the utmost confidence. I have been a fool for many years. I, Blair Sandburg, am a selfish fool. Yet you may wonder how I can speak with such unerring authority on the subject? I will tell you. Lying on the street in a puddle of your own blood waiting for death can make hindsight more than twenty/twenty. It can make it true color with telephoto lens capacities and sunlit even at night. 

I've hid my selfishness well in a backdrop of friendship and camaraderie. I've hid a lot of little character flaws well in that particular cardboard cut out forests. In fact, I've hidden more baggage than I care to think about in there. 

Jim carries his baggage around his neck for all his tight-lipped, stonewalled front faade. But I have found in my shorter life and more extensive travels that the silent nuts are sometimes the simplest to crack. It's the open book ones like me that can hide the big shit behind a constant flow of "Me, me, me." The heart you wear on your sleeve is not the one that drives you. It's the one meant for show and tell time. The real one is buried deep in a layer of selfishness and self-protection, a vault no one could crack...except death. 

I would start from the beginning but I don't know that I have that much time so I'll give you a brief synopsis of where I am right now. 

Well, where I am is flat on the sidewalk before the First Maritime Commerce Bank on Front Street in downtown Cascade. What happened? A really bad gun battle between the good guys (Us) and a group of international terrorist (Them) looking to get their assets unfrozen from this particular bank. Us vs. Them. We won! I'm just one of the necessary casualties of the war against terror. 

Being shot sucks. Being shot several times sucks worse. I know I'm hit in more than one place but for the life of me I couldn't tell you where. The pain radiates all over my body and consumes me like fire. I can barely see. But I see Jim. He's looking over me. His hands are covered in my blood as he tries to staunch the flow. 

"Hang in there, Chief. Hang on for me." 

_Hang on for me._

His words are actually very selfless. He wants me to live for him but not because it would benefit him very much. I'm sure that my continued existence would bring him some measure of joy. He would have his partner, the person who is supposed to watch his back, for a little longer. But I know he wants my life for me and not for himself. He wants to see me make it. He's cheering for me. 

If he only knew what a fool I am. 

One million years ago, Blair Sandburg let his brain think to fast for his good sense to control. He was stretched as thin as his intellect would allow, shooting out in all direction. He had a pot boiling on every burner. Everything was interesting and exciting and the perfect subject for a peer-reviewed article that I would start on by tomorrow at the latest. I had feelers out at every hospital and clinic in Cascade looking for people who suffered from hypersensitivity of any kind. All I got for months were eczema cases. 

Then came Jim. Light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, tactile sensitivity...all that without being autistic. I had discovered early on that autism was often associated with the sentinel gene. True sentinels however were the rare one in ten billion who did not get the autism gene to go with the sentinel one. It's my theory that then these individuals were often misdiagnosed as children as having epilepsy due to the zone outs. Ergo the drug used for juvenile epilepsy suppresses the expression of the sentinel gene. 

Not autistic. Not a diagnosed epileptic. Jim Ellison was a dream come true. My brain went into overload. I marched into his life without a second thought. Now that I look back at it I realize how incredibly dumb I was in my selfishness. I impersonated a doctor to gain access to a police officer's personal medical file and then later to gain access to him! If he hadn't been so very desperate, I would probably still be serving jail time instead of watching my life leech out of me into the street. 

It doesn't matter anyhow. After that, I was on a collision course set up by my blind rapaciousness. I pursued James Ellison with more zeal than I've ever used to pursue a potential date. My ego was in heaven. I promised him the sun and the moon without ever once wondering if I had the means, the necessary know-how or the funding to deliver. I just promised and promised and babbled and babbled until I'm sure he was so confused that he just had to say yes. I looked like the guy with all the answers. 

So after his initial reaction of disbelief and dislike, which in my clear hindsight was probably the correct first impression, He gave me a listen. It also helped that I saved him from becoming road pizza during a zone-out. He let me into his life. 

Now it's time for a small caveat. I made him the subject of my impending dissertation. I called my committee together and handed them a twenty-five-page proposal. I never once used his name but it wasn't because I was trying to be careful. I just didn't see the necessity. It was more dramatic and appealing with a mystery sentinel in the big city. "Can one actually exist?" they would ask themselves. I would provide the proof later like a stage magician and walk away with roses from the audience and a piece of sheepskin for my office wall. I never once thought of Jim. 

No I didn't think of Jim. At least not right away. But later, when it was much too late, I thought of him. I had to in order to save my other selfish dreams...to save my foolish face. 

He let me into his life, into his trust and into his world. He let me permeate every corner of his self till I became a part of the definition of Jim Ellison. He let me saturate his perception of his safe places. I became friend and confidant. It wasn't all that easy but it wasn't as tough as you would think it could be. I look like an open book; he looks like Fort Knox. The truth is quite the opposite. I drew him out and he came willingly. I got all sorts of things from him that others would have stood flabbergasted to learn. 

Do you know that he is aquaphobic? (Odd condition for a surfer but it was surfing that created the fear. He fell asleep on his board and drifted out to sea. Spent twenty-two hours paddling back with little idea which way was land other than the sunset and sunrise. ) 

Do you know that he ran away once from home? Only stayed away for a day though. 

Do you know he joined the army to rebel against his father and guilt out his brother? 

Do you know that he married Caroline because she was the first girl to say 'I love you' to him? 

Do you know that he slept once with his old partner's ex-girlfriend on the day that he died? 

I know all this and a lot more. I could write the James Ellison A-Z, James Ellison for Dummies manual. I know him better than his own family. That's only because I saturated his world for my own selfish purposes. 

His life is full of betrayal and disappointment. He has very little family left that hasn't hurt him brutally in anyway. He has only a few friends left that haven't disappointed him or turned their back on him. Unfortunately I don't count in their numbers. I'm amazed that I am still his friend. I've hurt him so badly so many times. 

This is getting out of hand. I'm trying to draw an account of my life in what miserable few minutes left I have in it and I am failing horribly to get to the point. There is just so much to tell and it all revolves around James Ellison. I'm like a satellite stuck in orbit around him. A few times that orbit had disintegrated a bit and I came perilously close to burning up in his atmosphere. Let me start at a basic so this doesn't hit you from out of the blue. 

After my first semester of observing him, my interest in him was more than scientific. Now let me elucidate on my own psychological make up before you get any more confused. 

I am not by any means a genius. People often mistake industry for genius. I'm just a guy with a seriously hyperactive motivation and a little bit of creativity. Hyperactive is good when properly applied. I applied it very well. I don't have culture or breeding. I have a mother who spent all her time trying her damnedest not to be a mom to me but a best friend. I had too many varying male role models that stayed in my life for no more than a year or two. None stayed more than two years at the top end and a few were shorter than six months. I never had permanent roots while growing up. We were always on the move and living on a shoestring budget. Books were my only escape and hobby. They were the cheapest form of entertainment that my mother could buy and they traveled well. 

I went to school at last in one location and discovered girls and that was fun and satisfying. But I knew that there was more to it than that. I was curious and I had been raised in an open environment that encouraged curiosity. My sophomore year as an undergrad I indulged my curiosity. I found him through a discreet bi-curious dating service. His name is not important nor is any of his vital stats. What matters is that we shared a brief and discreet set of encounters that lasted over a two-week period. What ended it was his hang-ups...not mine. He was worried about getting caught by his fraternity pals, about what his parents would do. He was worried about getting disowned and disliked and dismissed and just totally dissed. Social pariah. He broke it off. I got busy in my life. I never pursued another male for a while. None of the ones that didn't give a damn about being a social pariah interested me much. They seemed so ugly and shallow and self absorbed...I should talk. 

I stuck with girls for a while. They seemed so much more gratifying. They take dating as a joint venture; not as a competition in suave. That was where I was at when I met James Ellison. Working on my degrees had sucked down a bulk of my time. The rest I spent mainly in pursuit of women. Only once more did I take a man to my bed and that was while I was in the Philippines for six weeks on my first expedition. This was during my first five years of grad school going after my masters. It was a brief encounter with another grad student from Great Britain. It was a one-night thing that left us both satisfied but not looking for more. 

So now when I tell you that my interest in James Ellison became more that scientific you can now nod your head with a knowing smile and mutter, "Ah ha." 

I never let him know that of course. He's a big hulkering brute of a policeman and ex army airborne ranger. Are you crazy? I would not have been able to saturate his life if he knew that little parcel of luggage about me in the beginning. Fortunately, he took my heterosexuality as a given and I never gave him any cues to doubt it. Girls. And I had a string of them all sultry and soft and satisfying. I even competed against him for their attention at times. Sometimes he won. Sometimes I won. Regardless of who won it rarely lasted more than a few dates. I have a theory about that. 

It was me swinging low in his orbit. I didn't try to knock the girls out of his atmosphere but it's hard to maintain a steady focus in a new and needy romantic relationship when you have to tend to another relationship that at times could be just as needy. I needed information. Jim needed control. We needed each other. A girl's interest can wane over time when one is too damn focused on working on another needy relationship. It never ends with anger or jealousy. It just ends with "Goodbye." And she's gone. I lost Maya like that. She was the only one that made me not think about Jim for a minute. And I really did intend to see her again. 

After Maya was gone, all I had left was Jim. I threw myself into my work. My orbit tightened. I kept up the semblance or normality but deep inside I knew that I was clinging to him like a life preserver. In retrospect, that orbit is the one thing that kept me from going to Chile to see Maya just one more time. 

When did I fall for him? That's a hard question to answer. I feel like I've loved him since forever. Yes, I said love. I know when I realized it was love. It was when he met my mom. He was so heavy in giving her attention. His eyes following her form. He was seriously interested. He wasn't just playing with me to get a rise out of me. But I wasn't mad about him pawing my mom with his eyes. I was more upset because I wanted him to look at me that way. Mom was to close to home, too close to me. If Jim Ellison was going to get hot and bothered over a Sandburg, it should have to be me! 

And then he called that slime bag Vincent chief. I wanted to throw up right there in the loft in front of my Mom and two angry people holding guns at us. Chief is my name. It's my pet name. You only call me Chief, Jim! That whole time was sickening and confusing. It was the only time I didn't enjoy one of my mother's visits and I hoped with great fervor that she wouldn't stop by too soon again although she promised to do so and I had acted pleased at the notion. 

"Chief! Chief! Hang on for me! Help is on the way!" 

I hear his voice through the haze of pain calling me back. I open my eyes again and I see the agony of my pain reflected in his eyes. He is bloody almost to the elbow now. I am dying and there is nothing he can do to stop it. He once promised my mom that he would protect me, keep me safe. 

It's hard this staying. It's hard not to just let go and run away. I'll try to stay for him because he wants it and not because I want too or that I want him or anything with in my selfish heart. 

"Stay with me, chief." He says on a desperate sigh. 

I'll try, Jim. 

My eyes close again and I soak in the pain that has caused me to loose control of my bladder right there in the street. As you can guess, right now, I couldn't care less and I'm sure Jim cares even lesser. 

He calls me brave. I'm a fraud, a crock, and a faker. I'm not brave. If I were brave I would have walked out of his life before I could wreak havoc all over it. He calls me brave because I've faced serial killers, terrorist and the unforgiving press with calm and creativity and reason. I say that I just got lucky a few times hucking some BS. But he calls me the bravest man he knows. 

Boy have I got him snowed. I fed him a line about his own fear-based responses to his own emotions and now he can't recognize some of the fear-based responses of my own. I run, Jim! I run like hell when it hurts to face a truth! I would have ran from you too but... 

I remember now! I died once before! I remember. It was strange that release from pain. From all pain. That release from the mess I was making of my life. Release from the collision course that I had seen all too clearly once I was up above it. And I dropped all the baggage and left it at the door. 

The bag called I never knew my father. 

The bag called I want a mommy not a friend. 

The bag called not all these men are my uncles and some of them are not very nice at all. 

The bag called Uncle Dennis shouldn't touch me there. 

I had so many bags, some of which I didn't even know I had packed. But they all fell away. I was free. I walked towards a place I knew I would be able to finally call home. And then I heard his voice. 

He was calling me. He was calling me back. He came after me, pleading with me, begging me. He called me back and I went to him. I went to him because he was home too. 

"Jim." I can barely form the word that is his name but he hears me. He'll always hear me. 

"Sssh, Chief. Don't try to speak. Save your strength." 

I want to tell him that I love him before I go. I want to get it out of me and leave this life without at least that one regret. I sunk a great deal into that investment. I should try to see it through to the end. But I am too weak. My lips won't form the words though I struggle to keep conscious to finish this for once and for all. 

I came back for him. I destroyed my first ambition for him. I picked up a gun for him. I put on a badge for him. I saturated his world until he consumed mine. Now all that was left was "why?" 

"Don't go." 

It is whispered to me as I slip from consciousness. I feel Jim's hand tighten on mine as a slip down and away from the pain. But I feel that hand on me tethering my soul. I am loosing awareness. And it is bliss. 

Layers of heaviness fall from me and I become more aware of life by degrees. The pain is less but it is still there. It had tried to chase me down but I had eluded it. For a time I had felt like I was slowly suffocating. My lungs could not get enough air. But that sensation is gone too. My throat is raw. 

I am alive. I know that now. The Japanese Buddhist culture would have called this a new life for me. I get to start again. Perhaps I will start this time as a better man. Maybe I'll face my fears a little more sincerely. Maybe I'll try to understand and control my selfish behaviors better. 

Okay, Sandburg, stop being so melodramatic. You did nothing but whine inside your head while you lay on the pavement bleeding. It's time to stop. 

But that whining had brought out some important points that I should pay attention to in my new life. My self-esteem is much lower than I would have guessed it to be. I think I'm a failure. I think I'm not as smart as everyone keeps telling me that I am. I have issues with my mother's hit-and-miss parenting style. I was discontent with the shifting men in my life. Oh-My-God! One of them molested me?! Why didn't I know that? Why didn't I remember? Why didn't I tell Naomi? Did she know? She should have known! I remember her being very angry with him when we left. Was that why? I was...I was...seven...years...old... 

"Blair." 

Jim? I hear his voice out side of me calling me up from layers of grogginess. I feel like a block of lead. My eyes feel glued shut yet I feel moister around them. I feel a tear roll down my wet cheeks. I am weeping? 

My eyes open slowly only because of the glueyness that remains. His eyes are clear blue in the dim lights of this place I am in. He looks over me. I see beyond him Tubing and IV hooks and monitors. A woman in scrubs walks past there are more beds stationed in here. More people in misery. I must be in some ward at the hospital. ICU? Post OP? ER Observation? I'm not sure. It's cold though. 

"Blair?" His voice is quiet but intense. He wants my attention. He wants my focus on him again. 

I blink up at him. I feel like a slug and I want to get the tears off my face. I just can't move very well. I feel my hand twitching in response to my brain's command to wipe. 

"Easy, Chief." His voice is still soft. His hand rests against mine. "Does it hurt a lot? I can call the nurse..." 

He thinks the tears are from the pain of my wounds. He turns, scanning the ward for a nurse who doesn't look too busy. Will I ever be able to hand him some of my baggage the way he has given me some of his? I know that he has never given me the whole baggage train. I'm sure there is more about his mom and why his senses were repressed when he was a child anyhow. But I also know that he will give them up in time. I just have to stay patient. Not an easy thing for me. 

And wasn't it I who spent a good deal of my adolescence and young adulthood in and out of therapist offices getting in touch with my feelings, my issues. A wise man once said that the journey of a thousand steps never finishes. I'm undone. 

I blink a bit at my tears and I feel a gentle hand touch my face. He wipes away my tears for me. 

"It's goina be all right now, Blair." His voice is gentle for me. 

I want to close my eyes again and sleep in the warmth and security of his voice but I keep my eyes open as wide as I can for a little while longer. I want to pay attention to what he is saying. 

"The doctors said that the slugs you took in your gut just missed your liver and that's great news. They said the damage wasn't too bad in there. The one you took in the thigh though...It hit your femoral artery. You almost bled to death..." He stops. His mouth clamps shut and his jaw works furiously. I swear to god the man will have worn his molars to the roots in a few years if he doesn't stop this aggravated teeth grinding thing. 

"But you're gonna be alright. They gave you a few units of blood. You're gonna be fine, Chief." 

I know. I'm going to be fine. We are going to be fine. I continue to look in his eyes, wide and clear blue, like the everlasting sky. This is my new life. This is where I start. This is where I begin. It is time to unpack the baggage. 

I'm home. 

* * *

End 

Confessions of a Better Man by E. Batagur: batagur@soulsistahslash.com  
Author and story notes above.

Disclaimer: _The Sentinel_ is owned etc. by Pet Fly, Inc. These pages and the stories on them are not meant to infringe on, nor are they endorsed by, Pet Fly, Inc. and Paramount. 


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